Found a post on endocrine disruptors that advises companies on steps they should be taking to deal with endocrine disruptors now. You’re probably thinking what I thought when I first saw the post, “Yeah, right.”

I was pleasantly surprised. It’s heartening to see an investment manager taking an enlightened position like this.

As a class, [endocrine disruptors (EDs)] can have profound and unparalleled impacts on families, communities and businesses because of their possible links to learning disabilities, selected cancers, reproductive disorders, diabetes and other health disorders.

Liroff lists several recent developments in public awareness regarding endocrine disruptors, describes what endocrine disruptors are and how they can affect health, and offers the following advice to chemical companies regarding endocrine disruptors:

Heed the advice of NIEHS’s Dr. Linda Birnbaum: “[T]he timing, as well as the dose, makes the poison.” The American Chemical Society, in a newly published statement on endocrine disruptors, echoes this view: “A large and growing body of environmental health literature shows that endocrine disrupting substances … do not fit the central tenet of regulatory toxicology, namely, that the ‘dose makes the poison.'”

4. Take action. Join the leading edge companies who are actively screening their chemical inventories for endocrine disruptors and are taking steps to lower toxicity via safer chemical substitutes or designs….

[A] proactive approach of analysis and substitution, and responding to early warning signals, is more likely to buttress consumer confidence in your brand than defensive posturing that reflexively asserts “more research is needed” or “no cause-effect relationships have been shown.”

Richard A. Liroff, Ph.D., is founder and director of the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN). IEHN is a collaboration of investment managers that advocates for safer corporate chemicals policies to grow long-term shareholder value and reduce financial and reputational risks to companies. The business case for corporate safer chemicals policies, a list of shareholder resolutions on safer chemicals policies, and a roster of participants can be found on the IEHN website, www.iehn.org. Disclosure: Liroff serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange and served on the priority-setting work group of EPA’s Endocrine Disruption Screening and Testing Advisory Committee.

On Feb. 9, 2010, President Obama created the first-ever federal task force to enhance coordination between private sector companies, not-for-profits, agencies within the government and other organizations to address the problem of childhood obesity. The Presidential Memo that established the Task Force directed senior officials from executive agencies and the White House to develop a comprehensive interagency action plan that details a coordinated strategy, identifies key benchmarks and goals, describes research gaps and needs, and assists in the development of legislative, budgetary, and policy proposals that can improve the health and well-being of children, their families, and communities.

Now, Dr. Robert Lustig spoke about the basic problem with FDA and USDA on this issue in a lecture (see “The toxic effects of … sugar“). He said that the biggest problem is not lack of exercise, but ingesting too much fructose. (If lack of exercise is the reason, explain why there’s an epidemic of obese six-month-olds.)

Lustig says that the studies linking fat consumption and heart disease did not control for sugar consumption. He pointed out that in Western societies high-fat diets are high-sugar diets. And he said that FDA won’t regulate fructose because it’s not an acute toxin, but a chronic toxin leading to metabolic syndrome (plus, the FDA considers it “natural”—which Dr. Lustig notes is true only on the technicality that HFCS is made from a natural product—HFCS is highly processed and refined). And the USDA, which controls the food pyramid, won’t touch high fructose corn syrup because it’s made from corn. (See also “Junk food turns rats into addicts. Bacon, cheesecake, Ho Hos alter brain’s pleasures centers.”)

The Federal Register notice points people to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative – http://www.letsmove.gov/. I certainly support this, but I think they need to go further and start looking at the connection between fructose and obesity. The site has links to all sorts of useful information, including a link to the Food Environment Atlas from USDA which shows consumption of various foods around the U.S., as well as maps showing diabetes and obesity rates (under “Health”).

While there’s no acknowledgement that the type of sugar we’re consuming has an effect, I did notice that there are signs that someone in the government is paying attention. Water is recommended as the main drink. Fruit juices are discouraged, as are “added sugars.” But they don’t appear to have made the leap yet to the connection between fructose and the metabolic syndrome, which appears to be even more important than the number of calories consumed or burned.

In that post, Geoffrey Meadows identifies the eight things as we could do something about as tobacco, radon, food and food packaging, safe homes, OSHA, protecting science and our regulatory agencies, public information, and prevention and the precautionary approach. (More on this in a future post.)

Interestingly, one of the sources Meadows cites is Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health, by David Michaels. — Oxford: Oxford University Press, c2008.

Case, in “The Real Story on BPA” (Fast Company, Feb. 2009) notes that chemical manufacturers have adopted similar tactics to those of tobacco companies. (Interestingly, the FDA has recently since reversed its position on BPA. See “Recent news” below.)